Deconstructed screen printing

Last weekend I attended an ATASDA workshop with Lin Wilson teaching us deconstructed screen printing.

It was a fun day with lots of really interesting screens being made and that wow factor when the print was pulled. It is amazing the different effects that can be achieved with such ordinary things - placemats, string, rubber bands, a shirt! (This was a really fantastic result).

Today I have been washing out and rinsing the fabric after batching in the sun for the last couple of days. They are now hanging on the line drying:

   

I really enjoyed this workshop and am very happy with the results. I can see a couple of pieces being used for a future challenge entitled "Nature's Trail" with my group "Frayed".

I still have a screen ready to put into fabric but I think it will have to wait until after our holiday.

Lesley Rippon Retrospective

Today I went to Lesley Rippon's exhibition at the Royal Art Society's gallery at North Sydney, together with members of my ATASDA group Frayed. We have been meeting together for three months now and decided an excursion would be a great idea - an opportunity to get out and about and also to get to know each other a little better.

Lesley's exhibition was a wonderful display of her art work and how she has developed and changed over the years. Her early work was from the 1970's and her pieces progressed through to the present day.

There were watercolours, oils, mixed media, textile pieces and combinations of all of these. Her work is still developing even though she is 79! It would seem that Lesley sees no boundaries as far as art is concerned. She uses old and new techniques and is constantly experimenting with new products, thanks to contacts she has made throughout her art career.

It was a refreshing exhibition and also encouraged me to look further into using different techniques in the one piece. It was also great to be able to get up close and look at the finer detail of her work and she the different techniques used.

After our visit we walked up to Blues Point Road and found a lovely cafe for lunch. All in all a great way to spend a day with friends.

Sydney Quilt Show

SYDNEY QUILT SHOW

I was very surprised and excited to receive two awards at the Sydney Quilt Show for my quilt Red Sherbet. This year the Quilters' Guild of NSW Inc had a special category for Red & White quilts. I received 2nd Prize in the Red & White Category, Contemporary/Art. This was truly amazing to me, but even better than that was the Excellence in Domestic Machine Quilting Award! This award covers the machine quilted quilts for the whole show. It was really hard for me to accept that the judges thought my quilt was good enough for this award. Even harder when I looked at the other quilts at the show. I am now settling in to the idea that it's ok for ME to receive this award - I worked hard to quilt it and enjoyed the process immensely.

Red Sherbet

The quilt was designed by Cheryl Arkison and was in her book "A Month of Sundays". Cheryl was excited about my award and I thank her for giving me permission to exhibit the quilt.

Now to think about what to enter in next year's show - it seems like a good time to tackle some of the UFO's I have in my cupboard!

Christmas is almost here

This year has been very full! The birth of two new grandchildren has added to the weekly activities with our usual get-togethers on a Tuesday plus a few other baby sitting occasions.

I have entered the world of art, art journaling and sketch booking this year. It has been a very exciting journey, learning all about the myriad forms of journaling that goes on around the world. There are so many blogs about these different forms of journaling that one can spend the whole day looking at them. I have to restrict myself or else another week has gone by and I haven't accomplished anything.

So far this year I have been very slowly working through Betty Edwards "Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain" which has told me that I can draw, I must needed to learn how to see. I have enrolled in two on-line workshops - one by Design Matters on Sketchbooks and another by Jane LaFazio on Sketching and Watercolour. These courses have been really great and I hope to continue next year with Design Matters and finish their full course.

Learning about watercolours has been really fun. I have always loved the effect of watercolour painting - the lovely washes of subtle colour and the delicacy that can be achieved. There is no doubt that my efforts are very basic at this stage but I will definitely persevere with this particular medium and hope to become quite competent. Below is a Mango that I painted as part of Janes's course.

 It was quite hard to get the colours blending as it was a large area and the paint dried very quickly as the temperature was around 30C that day.

The year had flown with Christmas less than two weeks away. It is time to look forward and see what next year will bring.

I found a journaling group called The Documented Life Project and have decided to join this group and follow along with the weekly prompts to see how my journaling will progress. A side group of this I found is Documented Faith which is a Christian group doing a journal with a Biblical focus. As my word for next year is FOCUS I this would be a great thing to do a well. So a full year ahead with, I hope, a really good Focus to start with. I do pray that my life will be Christ centred this next year and also art focused.

Blessing at Christmas and a Joyful New Year ahead

Pam

MUDGEE RETREAT

I have just spent four wonderful days with some ATASDA friends doing textile related things with the theme of Feast of the Senses? It has been a great time to relax, do something new and become immersed in the atmospher of a bunch of creative people. We did Eco dyeing, drawing, painting, laughing, eating, walking, listening to Jan Irvine-Nealie talk about her art journey - all wonderful things to do. I am energised and revitalised and ready to get some creative work done. Perhaps I may even get back to blogging on a regular basis. Photos to come!

Done at last!

Over the past two months we have been building a garage/workshop/studio and updating the pool area and I have also been preparing for the opening of a pop up shop in Hornsby called The Artists Loft. A group of 15 members of ATASDA have been working hard to put this shop together and last night was or opening. It was a great evening with lots of visitors and a good number of sales.

My little quilt has been a fun adventure in something new for me both in matters of design and machine quilting. I am of two minds whether I want it sold or not. The next month I will be working at the shop once or twice a week an hopefully making more things for sale.

If the shop is a success we hope to do it again in April.

I hope also to spend some time relaxing by the pool in our lovely new area.

Bye for now.

Machine Embroidery

This is a photo of my leaf picture that I made in Meredith Woolnough's workshop. I was very pleased to be able to finish this piece and frame it at the workshop, thanks to Meredith's great teaching and encouragement.

My next workshop is screen printing with Lin Wilson tomorrow. I am really looking forward to this workshop and have possibly too high expectations of what I might achieve. Time will tell!